Dra. Núria Almiñana Domènech

I have more than 18 years of expertise dedicated to the world of scientific research in the field of Cell Biology and Biotechnology sector.

Once I finished my degrees in Pharmacy and Biochemistry, I obtained a grant from the Spanish Government to do an Industrial PhD in collaboration with CSIC (Superior Council of Scientific Investigations) and a company, Lipotec S.A., a young Catalan small company dedicated to several fields, including Pharma, Nutrition and Cosmetics.

During my PhD, I worked on a project related to the Pharma area of the company, developing new delivery systems to target tumoral cells, based on Doxorubicin liposomes coated with extracellular matrix synthetic peptides. Thanks to the work done during my PhD, I was able to develop my technical skills on liposome preparation, peptide synthesis, cell culture techniques, screening of antitumor and antiangiogenic drugs, fluorescence techniques, HPLC, physicochemical studies and microscopy (including bright field, fluorescence and electron microscopy).

After finishing my PhD, in 2004, I had the opportunity to join the company as a Biochemist Specialist for the Cosmetics area, and I took advantage of all the knowledge I acquired during my academic experience to introduce biological and biochemical know-how in the company. I was responsible for designing, implementing and managing a new cell culture laboratory that allowed integrating in house a new technology based on the use of human skin cells to setup and optimize new cost-effective cell culture methods that comprise both in vitro (enzymatic assays and 2D cell cultures) and also ex vivo (3D cultures, including skin biopsies and reconstructed skin models), to develop new active ingredients, including synthetic peptides, biotechnological extracts and botanicals for skin care.

Since 2008, I was also involved in the design and execution of in clinical studies and thanks to my education as a Pharmacist, I adapted my knowledge related to pharmaceutical clinical studies to the cosmetic field. After some years of working with external CROs, in 2015, I was responsible for implementing another new laboratory in the company based on clinical testing.

After several years dedicated directly to the experimental work, since 2010, I focused on my role as department manager, supervising the scientific research led by several Project Leaders and performed by laboratory technicians, being my main functions scientific direction, project and team management, and translating science into new products.